musicipfandomcom-20200214-history
Help - Basics
MusicIP Mixer Help - Getting Started Step 1. Install the MusicIP Mixer Application First... Double-click on the downloaded MusicIP.exe file. During the short installation program, you will be asked where you would like to install the program and if you would like to put a short-cut to the Mixer on your desktop. It is suggested that you leave this option as a default. Second... Double-click on the desktop icon MusicIP Mixer. Step 2. Activate Your Music Collection The more songs you activate, the more interesting and dynamic your playlists will be. After following the Install steps, the MusicIP Mixer will appear on your screen. A Browse for Folder will also appear for first time users. You must select the folders in your computer which contain the music you want to put into the Mixer. Step 3. Create New Playlists/Mixes Once you've installed, you can mix! To generate a playlist, highlight a song you would like to use as the building block, and press the New Mix button. (If you would like to build a playlist based upon multiple songs, press Shift or Ctrl Key, highlighting as many songs as you'd like and then press the New Mix button.) A list of songs will appear in the lower window which are similar to the original song. You can now press the Play button to send the selected songs to your music player. The Mixer also supports dragging & dropping on to your portable device, music player, or CD burner as supported by those applications. After you've made your first few mixes, you may want to browse through our Tips & Tricks section for some more advanced options. Note that you can configure the size of the generated lists from the File/Customize Options menu. How the Mixer Works in the Background After you have finished adding songs to your Mixer, the program will attempt to lookup analysis data for each of your songs from the MusicIP server. This initial lookup will only use the tag information, and is very fast. Music must be analyzed in order to be included in mixes and playlists. Songs will appear in red before they have been processed. As they turn to green, this means that the track has been analyzed and can be included in the activities of the Mixer. Songs which turn to black are considered unusable in the creation of a playlist but can still be listened to. The mixer will start analyzing your music automatically whenever you add new tracks. You can stop or start analysis at any time from the Library menu (choose Start Analysis or Stop Analysis as appropriate). You may want to leave the application running until all your songs have been processed. MusicIP Mixer Help - Linux The MusicIP Mixer runs as a Java-based gui on linux. See below for requirements and limitations. This distribution was tested on Mandrake 9.2, 10, Redhat 7.x, Redhat 9, Debian 3.0, Suse 9.0 (Glibc 2.2 or higher). If you have problems with these, or any other versions of linux, please let us know. Requirements x86 CPU Java 1.4.0_01 or higher Internet Access Make sure your JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the directory where Java is installed. Beta versions of Java may cause stability problems. The MusicIP Mixer currently supports .mp3, .ogg, .flac and .wav files on linux. For more detailed info, visit the revision history page. You may also want to visit the Windows or Mac OS X pages. Installation Download and extract the distribution. To run the program, use the MusicMagicMixer command. User information will be stored in the .MusicIP directory under each user's home directory. Configuration The MusicIP Mixer is configured to use the following external applications by default: *Music Player realplay *File Manager mozilla *Browser mozilla *Mail Client mozilla You can change these from the File/Customize Options menu, under the Applications tab.If you need to pass a flag to the Java virtual machine, you can prefix the flag with "-J" and pass it to the MusicMagicMixer executable. Sometimes (e.g. Linux RedHat 7) MusicIP Mixer fails with the following error: Current locale is not supported or Unable to load Strings! This error happens because some locales are not supported by the Java virtual machine. The easiest way to correct this problem is to set the LANG environment variable to the supported locale: "en" If you are using sh or bash, execute: export LANG=en For csh and tcsh execute: setenv LANG en Tips and Tricks MusicIP Mixer is designed to be customizable to the way you want to listen to your music - there are many options to adjust the lists you create. If you don't like the lists you are getting, try some of the following tips. *The song list depends on having appropriate songs available. If you have one Soul song in a collection of Punk music, and try to make a selection based on the Soul song, you still won't get any other Soul songs. (Recall that the genre names are extracted from your original music files, and are not created by the MusicIP Mixer - if you disagree with any classification, you can use the tag editor of your choice to update the tag, and then use the Library/Refresh option to update the genres visible in the Mixer.) *If there are songs on the list which you feel are a bad match, you can right-click on the song and choose Less Like This. This will create a new list which will remove the undesired songs, and others like it. This restriction will apply only to the current mix, and not future mixes, so feel free to experiment. If, on the other hand, there are some songs on the list which you really like, you can choose More Like This to include more songs like that one. *If there's one or two songs on any list which just you don't want to hear, you can delete them before pressing play (select the song or songs you don't want to hear, and press the delete key). This will remove them from the playlist, but not from the database, or from your computer. (You can remove songs from your database by using the Library/Delete Songs option). You can also use Replace This Song to delete the song and replace it with a different one. Replace This Artist will remove all songs by the artist(s) associated with the selected song(s), and replace them with new ones. This "ban" will only apply to the current mix. *You can take advantage of genre filtering to remove all songs from undesired categories. First, choose File/Preferences and select Restrict mix to selected genres. This will cause the New Mix button to honor the genre selections currently in place. This means that the generated list will only include genres which are currently selected. If you select a genre with only a few songs, then the Mixer will only have a few songs to choose from when creating the list. With genre filtering enabled, you will be able to ban genres from lists using a right-click on the offending song. For instance, if you create a mix and find a Country song, you can right-click on the song and choose Hide Genre: Country. All the Country songs will be removed from the list, and the Country genre will be de-selected. (To see the genres in the song list, choose File/Preferences, click on the Playlist View tab, highlight Genre and press the Add button.) *If you are finding that the list is too diverse (perhaps there are too many songs with different styles), you can use the File/Preferences menu to change the Artist style setting. This lets you control how closely you want the styles to match, in addition to the overall sound. At the far left, the style will be ignored. At the far right, the style will be strongly preferred. If you set the style to be strongly preferred, you will probably only get songs by a small number of artists, or from a small number of CD's. Note that a song must either be on an album of 6 or more tracks, or the associated artist must have 6 or more songs in order for the MusicMagic Mixer to associate a style. (You can check this easily by choosing Similar Artists or Similar Albums when you right-click on an artist or an album - if this option is enabled, then the Mixer was able to create a style for that artist or album.) *If you like a list, but want more variety, you can use the File/Preferences menu and either move the Variety slider farther to the right or simply increase the number of tracks which will appear in the list. *You can select multiple songs when you create a mix - this will often give you a nice variety while staying in the general mood you are after. Use SHIFT-click to select a range of songs, or CTRL-click to add a single song at a time to the set of selected songs. Note that it will take longer to create mixes if you select a lot of songs. *A different way to make a relatively restricted playlist is to select an artist, and choose Similar Artists by right-clicking on the artist name. Choose several of the artists listed, as your mood suits, and press the Add button. The playlist will now contain all songs by all those artists. *Final tip: If you prefer a specific shuffling algorithm you may want to shuffle your new mix before you send it to the player.